Meet Lauren, an office manager and recent college grad. She was contacted by a market research firm through Craigslist and asked if they could send her out to research laptop purchases. If she allowed them to record the experience on camera, they agreed to pay for the laptop. Lauren agreed and when the experience was over, the market researchers revealed that they were, in fact, an advertising agency who wanted to use the footage to create a television ad for Microsoft. The results are below and make up the latest effort by Microsoft to respond to Apple.
Lauren was one of 10 people chosen by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky who took each of the recruits through a laptop shopping experience, with target prices ranging from $700 to $2,000.According to Microsoft, none of the recruits chose an Apple product. In this first released ad we see that Lauren chooses to visit the Apple Store, but can’t find a 17” laptop within her budget and sarcastically concludes “she’s not cool enough to be a Mac person”. Her later trips to Circuit City and Best Buy bring her a number of choices in her price range and she settles for an HP model for $699. The producers reward her with the cash to buy her choice and send her on her way.
Apple’s lack of bargain or lower-priced computer models has long been a popular complaint amongst consumers and here it creates an effective criticism for Microsoft to leverage against their competitor, so much so that it’s a surprise that the company didn’t choose this tack earlier, before the failed Mojave Experiment, Senfield & Gates, and I’m A PC Campaigns.
While many will try to find out what model of laptop Lauren actually bought and whether it was a good deal (according to Microsoft it was the HP DV7-1245X ), the details themselves won’t change the basic point that, for many consumers buying an Apple computer simply isn’t in their financial reality, that for most a PC is simply the only way to go and it’s quite possible to be happy with that result.
Not to say that Microsoft’s new ad campaign is perfect. Lauren has a fun time, although it’s hard not to think it might be because she’s been sent out on a shopping spree. The trickery of the campaign is similar to Microsoft’s earlier Mojave ads where a focus group is brought in to look, but apparently not touch or use, a version of Windows Vista dressed up to look like a new piece of software. One again that was an ad agency pretending to be a market research group.
The bait-and-switch methods used to get the footage along with the hard-to-relate-to shopping spree adventure may just create a bit of resentment from viewers against a company that can’t afford to be seen as unable to connect with their potential consumers.
The new ad debuted on US television last night and will be the first of three, with potentially more spots to follow. According to Microsoft Canada, there are no plans to air the campaign here.
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